Kel of The X Facta tagged me to do the "Seven Things About Me" thing.

So, without further ado...

> I apparently inherited my love of bagpipes (when played well) from the grandfather who died before I was born. I also like sitar music (when played well), which he apparently also was fond of.

> When I was about six, and just past the age of kinda "believing" in Santa, there was an Incident on Christmas Eve. Back on the farm, my bedroom was right next to the main lounge, which had a large fireplace. I had retired to bed for the night when there was a scrabbling in the chimney. Could it be Santa!?!? No, it wasn't. It was a possum. And possums do not deliver Christmas presents. They just get grumpy and have to be removed by Dad wearing his motorcycle gloves.

> That wasn't the end of animal incidents in the old farm house. A few years after that on Boxing Day, my friend Meals and I went down to our cellar to check it out. There was no electricty down there, and Mum asked me to check the beams for termites with the torch I was carrying. I'd just finished shining the light around the "ceiling" and was getting ready to explore the cellar properly when I shone the light down on the floor. A foot in front of me was a six-foot king brown snake, curled up, asleep. "Meals, there's a snake. We have to get out of here now," I said, very calmly. We shot up the steps, slammed the lid down on the cellar and rushed to the kitchen. My parents thought we were joking. When they saw the snake, they called the snake handler guy, he removed it and released it out in the bush. By the time they got up there, the heat had woken the snake up and it was thrashing around like crazy. Thank God for freezing cellars.

> This afternoon was one of the most pleasant afternoons I'd had for a long time - warm afternoon sunshine, hot lemon-peppermint tea, a comfortable chair I dragged outside, a blanket and The Oxford Book of English Verse edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. The old English from the 13th Century was puzzling at first, and I'd never really taken the time to explore how language has changed in terms of verse. Oddly, most of the words, although more or less nonsensical now, make sense. Probably the context.

> I love Allen's lolly pineapples. And racing cars. And was overjoyed when they stopped doing the dreadful natural flavours and colours thing with Snakes Alive.

> The more I see of Melbourne, the more I adore it. I think it'd be hard to leave, because the only other place I'd really want to go back to would be South Australia (or overseas). I despise Sydney with a passion, Queensland is too humid and Tasmania was pretty, but so silent.

> That said, I like silence. But on my terms. Someone I knew when younger said last year I'd be the kind who, even when married, would want my own space (and possibly even house) for when I was in a solitary mood. Strangely, for someone who hasn't seen me for years, he was right.

As the rules of the meme go, I now pick seven bloggers to share seven things themselves:

Penguin @ Penguin - Life As Me
Clare @ insane troll logic
Kaisa @ The Homely Housewife
Kris @ Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Free Speech
PowerPuff @ Ramblings
MaybeMelody @ File Under 'Miscellaneous'
Deb @ The Debn8r

Here's what you do:

> Link to your original tagger and list these rules in your post.
> Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
> Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and links to their blogs.
> Let them know they’ve been tagged.
> Let your tagger know you've completed the meme.